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Targeted testing of specific types of websites
by Maria Xynou 25 Oct '19

25 Oct '19

Hello, Often when censorship events emerge (leading up to or during political events, such as protests or elections), social media, news media, and VPN sites are among the websites commonly blocked. To enable the testing of specific types of websites, we have set up a page which includes OONI testing buttons: https://ooni.org/get-involved/run/ If you have the OONI Probe mobile app installed, tap on each button in that page (https://ooni.org/get-involved/run/) open it with your OONI Probe mobile app (not with a web browser), and tap "Run". That's all. :) We hope that this can be useful for rapid response to emergent censorship events! To test different websites or to create different testing buttons (like the ones in the page shared above), use the OONI Run platform: https://run.ooni.io/ Please share the page (and the testing buttons) with your networks: https://twitter.com/OpenObservatory/status/1187686984556396544 Thank you, Maria. -- Maria Xynou Research & Partnerships Director Open Observatory of Network Interference (OONI) https://ooni.torproject.org/ PGP Key Fingerprint: 2DC8 AFB6 CA11 B552 1081 FBDE 2131 B3BE 70CA 417E

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Report: Egypt blocks BBC and Alhurra
by Maria Xynou 26 Sep '19

26 Sep '19

Hello, In collaboration with community members in Egypt, OONI just published a report on the blocking of BBC and Alhurra in Egypt: https://ooni.org/post/2019-egypt-blocks-bbc-and-alhurra/ We share network measurement data on: * Blocking of BBC: https://explorer.ooni.org/search?until=2019-09-26&domain=www.bbc.com&probe_… * Blocking of Alhurra: https://explorer.ooni.org/search?until=2019-09-26&domain=www.alhurra.com&pr… We corroborated OONI measurements by performing manual curl tests with the help of our local partners, the findings of which we share in the report. We found that Egyptian ISPs are using Deep Packet Inspection (DPI) technology that is aware of TLS and which is most likely fingerprinting the SNI field of the TLS handshake. Both bbc.com and alhurra.com could therefore benefit from supporting Encrypted SNI on their backend servers to enable censorship circumvention (at least for Firefox users). As more protests are planned tomorrow, there is the risk that further censorship events may be triggered in Egypt. You can track any potential new censorship events by digging through measurements contributed by OONI Probe users in Egypt: https://explorer.ooni.org/search?until=2019-09-26&probe_cc=EG To check for blocked sites in Egypt, here are all the ones that present anomalies: https://explorer.ooni.org/search?until=2019-09-26&probe_cc=EG&only=anomalies => this is automatically updated every day with new results (but there may be some false positives) Please share with your networks: https://twitter.com/OpenObservatory/status/1177294075948650499 Thanks, ~ OONI team. -- Maria Xynou Research & Partnerships Director Open Observatory of Network Interference (OONI) https://ooni.torproject.org/ PGP Key Fingerprint: 2DC8 AFB6 CA11 B552 1081 FBDE 2131 B3BE 70CA 417E

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OONI Community Meeting: Tuesday, 24th September 2019
by Maria Xynou 23 Sep '19

23 Sep '19

Hello, The OONI team warmly welcomes you to join us next Tuesday for our monthly community meeting. => Where? OONI Slack channel: https://slack.ooni.org/ (bridged with IRC: ircs://irc.oftc.net:6697/#ooni) => When? Tuesday, 24th September 2019 at 14:00 UTC (for 1 hour, until 15:00 UTC) The monthly OONI community meetings aim to: * Collect community feedback on OONI tools & methodologies * Address questions in relation to the use of OONI tools and OONI data * Foster discussions on internet censorship issues * Receive updates from the community We'd love to meet you and hear from you, and hope you can join us! Please add topics that you'd like to discuss during the meeting in this pad: https://pad.riseup.net/p/ooni-community-meeting If you're not able to join us, please feel encouraged to join us on Slack/IRC on any other day! All the best, ~ OONI team -- Maria Xynou Research & Partnerships Director Open Observatory of Network Interference (OONI) https://ooni.torproject.org/ PGP Key Fingerprint: 2DC8 AFB6 CA11 B552 1081 FBDE 2131 B3BE 70CA 417E

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Launched: Next Generation OONI Explorer!
by Maria Xynou 12 Sep '19

12 Sep '19

Hello, Today, the OONI team is thrilled to announce the public launch of the revamped, next generation OONI Explorer! Access the new OONI Explorer here: https://explorer.ooni.org/ Learn what's new in OONI Explorer 2.0: https://ooni.org/post/next-generation-ooni-explorer/ OONI Explorer is an open data resource on internet censorship around the world. Since 2012, OONI Probe users (https://ooni.io/install/) have contributed 280 million measurements from 18,000 networks in 233 countries -- all of which are available on OONI Explorer. And every day, OONI Explorer gets updated with new measurements from around the world! Our goal with the revamp is to improve OONI Explorer's usability and to support more advanced search functionalities in order to simplify and enable the process of exploring measurements and discovering censorship events. With the new OONI Explorer Search Tool, you can filter measurements to view: * Confirmed blocked websites * Websites whose testing presented anomalies * Measurements collected on different networks (i.e. filter based on ASN) With the new OONI Explorer Country Pages, you can: * Gain an overview of internet censorship in each country (based on OONI measurements) * View the most recently confirmed blocked sites * View the average speed and performance of tested networks * Check whether Tor is blocked * View charts with detailed stats on measurement coverage * Compare internet censorship, speed and performance, across networks within each country We encourage you to dig through OONI Explorer measurements and to uncover evidence of internet censorship worldwide! We thank OONI Probe users for contributing measurements, we thank community members for participating in usability studies and for sharing feedback for the improvement of OONI Explorer, and we thank Mozilla for supporting the revamp of OONI Explorer (via Mozilla Open Source Support). Please share the new OONI Explorer with your networks. Warm thanks, ~ OONI team. -- Maria Xynou Research & Partnerships Director Open Observatory of Network Interference (OONI) https://ooni.torproject.org/ PGP Key Fingerprint: 2DC8 AFB6 CA11 B552 1081 FBDE 2131 B3BE 70CA 417E

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OONI hardware?
by ilf 04 Sep '19

04 Sep '19

Friends, I do quite some traveling, including to regions and countries that could benefit from (another) OONI probe. However, I have not really found a good way to actually put OONI to use. The main reason is: all my devices heavily use VPNs and Tor. Have you ever thought about some tiny OONI hardware probe? I for one would love an small device, for example powered by PoE and getting uplink via ethernet, or powered by USB and getting uplink via WLAN. Something like a RIPE Atlas Probe: https://atlas.ripe.net/docs/probe-v2/ Three ideas come to mind: 1. Someone probably already hack up something like this on a Raspberry Pi or similar. Can someone point me to this? 2. Time and money are limited, and having something like this as a "product" needs both. But something like this could also vastly increase the amount of probes. The Android App already drastically lowered the bar to running a probe. But some dongle one would just have to plug in somewhere would lower that even more. And if cheap enough, they could just be left in interesting places. 3. RIPE Atlas Probes serve a different purpose. But has anyone ever talked to RIPE NCC about the possibility of maybe running OONI on them? I'd love to hear your thougths. I'm pretty sure others thought about this before. Best -- ilf If you upload your address book to "the cloud", I don't want to be in it.

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Ethiopia report on ongoing censorship events
by Maria Xynou 14 Aug '19

14 Aug '19

Hello, Today, OONI - in collaboration with Moses Karanja and Berhan Taye - published a research report documenting ongoing censorship events in Ethiopia, titled: "Resurgence of Internet Censorship in Ethiopia: Blocking of WhatsApp, Facebook, and African Arguments" You can read the report here: https://ooni.io/post/resurgence-internet-censorship-ethiopia-2019/ This report is a follow-up to our previous study, which documented the blocking of WhatsApp and Telegram in Ethiopia in mid-June 2019: https://ooni.io/post/ethiopia-whatsapp-telegram/ Following the latest internet blackout (between 22nd to 27th June 2019), Ethio Telecom has resumed to blocking social media -- but this time they blocked access to Facebook Messenger and facebook.com, instead of Telegram. OONI network measurement data shows that the blocking of WhatsApp, Facebook Messenger, and facebook.com in Ethiopia is ongoing. OONI data also shows that africanarguments.org (a pan-African platform covering investigative stories) is currently blocked by means of DNS tampering on mobile networks (but it's accessible on fixed-line networks). The political reforms of 2018 (and the associated unblocking of websites) were promising, but Ethiopia now seems to be sliding back to old ways when internet censorship was a pervasive practice. This study can be expanded upon through the use of OONI Probe (https://ooni.io/install/) and OONI data (https://ooni.io/data/) ~ Maria. -- Maria Xynou Research & Partnerships Director Open Observatory of Network Interference (OONI) https://ooni.torproject.org/ PGP Key Fingerprint: 2DC8 AFB6 CA11 B552 1081 FBDE 2131 B3BE 70CA 417E

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Ethiopia report on recent censorship events
by Maria Xynou 21 Jun '19

21 Jun '19

Hello, We published a research report which shares network measurement data on the recent censorship events in Ethiopia: https://ooni.io/post/ethiopia-whatsapp-telegram/ OONI measurements collected from Ethiopia show the blocking of WhatsApp and Telegram between 15th to 18th June 2019. Both WhatsApp’s registration service (v.whatsapp.net) and web interface (web.whatsapp.com) were blocked by means of SNI filtering, but the blocks were lifted by 10:10 UTC on 17th June 2019. Many Telegram endpoints were blocked between 15th to 18th June 2019, strongly suggesting that Telegram’s mobile app was blocked (though connections to some Telegram endpoints were successful). The IP blocking of Telegram’s mobile app appears to have resulted in the (likely unintentional) blocking of web.telegram.org as well. We also share IODA and Google traffic data on the internet blackouts that appear to have occurred between 11th to 14th June 2019 (corroborating NetBlocks' relevant report). ~ OONI team. -- Maria Xynou Research & Partnerships Director Open Observatory of Network Interference (OONI) https://ooni.torproject.org/ PGP Key Fingerprint: 2DC8 AFB6 CA11 B552 1081 FBDE 2131 B3BE 70CA 417E

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Jordan report: Facebook live-streaming interference during protests earlier this year
by Maria Xynou 14 Jun '19

14 Jun '19

Hello, Two days ago JOSA (Jordan Open Source Association) and OONI co-published a research report which examines Facebook live-streaming interference during protests in Jordan (between December 2018 to January 2019). The research report is available here: https://ooni.io/post/jordan-measuring-facebook-interference/ We also published a PDF version (thanks to JOSA!): https://ooni.io/documents/jordan-facebook-interference.pdf During protests in Jordan, locals reported that they were unable to view live-streaming from Facebook. But they also reported that viewing live-streaming was otherwise possible when protests were not taking place. Therefore, our first hypothesis was that perhaps people in Jordan couldn’t load videos on Facebook because they were using overloaded networks (rather than Facebook live streaming being interfered with). To examine this hypothesis and investigate further, we: * Enumerated Facebook cache servers to identify and map out those located in Jordan. * Tested the Facebook cache servers in Jordan, using OONI Probe. OONI measurements presented anomalies, providing signals of potential interference. * Ran a series of experiments using cURL. As part of such testing, we were able to rule out the hypothesis that Facebook users in Jordan couldn’t live-stream due to overloaded networks. Our findings suggest that Facebook Live Stream was temporarily interfered with in Jordan during protests between 20th December 2018 to 10th January 2019. In this report we share our findings in detail, as these methodologies could potentially be useful in examining similar cases elsewhere in the world. ~ OONI team. -- Maria Xynou Research & Partnerships Director Open Observatory of Network Interference (OONI) https://ooni.torproject.org/ PGP Key Fingerprint: 2DC8 AFB6 CA11 B552 1081 FBDE 2131 B3BE 70CA 417E

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OONI Community Meeting: Friday, 31st May 2019
by Maria Xynou 30 May '19

30 May '19

Hello, The OONI team warmly welcomes you to join us next Friday for our monthly community meeting. Where: https://slack.openobservatory.org/ (OONI Slack channel) When: Friday, 31st May 2019 at 14:00 UTC (for 1 hour, until 15:00 UTC) The monthly OONI community meetings aim to: * Collect community feedback on OONI tools & methodologies * Address questions in relation to the use of OONI tools and OONI data * Foster discussions on internet censorship issues * Receive updates from the community We'd love to meet you and hear from you, and hope you can join us! Please add topics that you'd like to discuss during the meeting in this pad: https://pad.riseup.net/p/ooni-community-meeting If you're not able to join us, please feel encouraged to join us on Slack or IRC (#ooni) on any other day! All the best, ~ OONI team -- Maria Xynou Research & Partnerships Director Open Observatory of Network Interference (OONI) https://ooni.torproject.org/ PGP Key Fingerprint: 2DC8 AFB6 CA11 B552 1081 FBDE 2131 B3BE 70CA 417E

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Nigeria report: Measuring internet censorship during 2019 elections
by Maria Xynou 29 May '19

29 May '19

Hello, Today OONI and Nigeria's Paradigm Initiative jointly published a research report examining information controls during Nigeria's 2019 elections. We have published two versions of this report: * Nigeria's 2019 elections through the lens of network measurements: https://ooni.io/post/2019-nigeria-internet-censorship/ (focusing on OONI analysis) * Nigeria's 2019 elections through the lens of digital rights: https://paradigmhq.org/download/the-2019-nigerian-elections-through-the-len… (includes full PDF with broader digital rights analysis) Thousands of OONI measurements collected from 16 different ASNs between 1st February 2019 to 31st March 2019 suggest that major internet services were accessible in Nigeria throughout the 2019 general elections. Most of the tested websites were found to be accessible, while popular instant messaging platforms, WhatsApp and Facebook Messenger, were working as well. However, a number of sites hosting content associated to the Biafra secessionist movement remained blocked. Recent OONI measurements show that Globacom continues to block these sites by means of TCP/IP blocking, MTN by means of DNS tampering, and Airtel at the HTTP layer. This is strongly suggested by the fact that the same network anomalies (in comparison to last year) are observed on the same networks with regards to the testing of the same list of sites. Out of more than a thousand URLs tested in total, only sites associated to Biafra consistently presented network anomalies throughout the testing period. You can expand upon this study through the use of OONI Probe (https://ooni.io/install/) and OONI data (https://ooni.io/data/) which is openly available. Best, Maria. -- Maria Xynou Research & Partnerships Director Open Observatory of Network Interference (OONI) https://ooni.torproject.org/ PGP Key Fingerprint: 2DC8 AFB6 CA11 B552 1081 FBDE 2131 B3BE 70CA 417E

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